“Wait, so you’re a cannibal?”
Dinah sighed, shaking her head. “No, I’m not a cannibal, I’m Catholic.”
Zewratses shook her head, making the tendrils on her head sway and the eyes at the ends of them blink. “Wait, but you said the little cookie and the red liquid are part of your god, which is also human? And something else? So, you eat your own.”
Dinah rubbed her temples. Why had she decided to volunteer for the Earthen-Martian Cultural Outreach Program again? Oh, right, to “promote inter-species community and peace.”
“It’s an allegory, okay? It doesn’t really mean we are eating the body of another person.”
“Wait, but what about transubstantiation? Doesn’t that mean the cookie and liquid are turned into real meat and blood?” Zewratses pointed at the textbook between them with a smooth claw.
“Yeah, okay, that’s what it sounds like, but it’s more complicated than that.” Dinah racked her brain, trying to remember her college theology class. “It’s like this: through prayer, the metaphysical substance or matter of the bread becomes Christ’s body, and the metaphysical nature of the wine becomes His blood, but the worldly natures of the bread and wine stay the same. So, you’re metaphorically eating the body of Christ, but it’s not actually flesh. Does that make sense?”
“Not at all.” Zewratses rubbed two hands across her face, while the third pulled the book closer, and the fourth flipped through the pages. “This whole book is about religion?”
“I think that one is just about Christianity,” Dinah said, looking over her notes. “Yeah, there are other books about the main Earthen religions.”
“You mean there is more than one belief system on your planet?” Zewratses asked, her many eyes widening.
“Yup, I think there are thousands, actually.”
“Thousands?” yelped Zewratses, her rust-colored scales glowing brighter. “How do you keep track of them all?”
“We don’t, really. People in different parts of the world believe different things,” Dinah said, shrugging.
“And everyone knows the others believe different things? Doesn’t that cause problems when people come together?” Zewratses asked.
“It used to be more of a problem, back in the day,” Dinah explained. “A long time ago, people used to fight all the time about religion, killing each other, placing restrictions on people who believed differently than they did. It was really nasty, according to the history books.”
“What changed?” Clearly this was more interesting to Zewratses than a detailed explanation of Catholicism, since the book sat abandoned on her furry lap.
“Well, several things,” Dinah said. She hadn’t prepared for a history lesson today. She hoped she could remember all the relevant details. “It started with some kind of plague. The history books aren’t very clear about what it was, but I guess that’s because it wiped out a considerable amount of the Earthen population.”
“So global tragedy brought the different people together?” Zewratses guessed.
“Nope. Quite the opposite, actually. Earthens started getting more and more obsessed with their different beliefs, and more suspicious of people who had a different faith. There was even more fighting, more restrictions, more cruelty.”
Zewratses frowned, both sides of her vertical mouth curving to the left. “Then how are they better now?”
“Well,” Dinah continued. “There were a few groups that were more fanatical than others. They were actually Christian, too.”
“Like you?”
Dinah shuddered. “Nothing like me. These people thought that they were the only ones who knew what what right, that they had the only ‘correct’ faith. And so they started hunting down and killing everyone who didn’t agree with them.”
“That’s so horrible. I can’t imagine any Martian killing another over so small a disagreement.”
“You have to understand that for Earthens, faith was a really big deal. So these groups were hunting and killing, and the remaining religious groups of the world united and fought back. A lot of people died in the ensuing war, but the Inter-Faithful Army – that’s what they called themselves – beat back the violent radicals, and won.”
“Did they kill them all?” Zewratses’ eyes were the size of saucers.
“I think they had to,” Dinah said, sadly. “The ones that didn’t kill themselves when they saw they had lost went out fighting. But, after all that, the Inter-Faithful Army became the Inter-Faithful Alliance, and agreed that even though they all believed different things, and that they had conflicting histories and shared important sites, that peace between them was more important than their ideology. They had all seen too much bloodshed.”
Zewratses leaned back in her chair, closing her many eyes. “What a strange history. Martians never had such wars over belief.”
“Really?” If she was going to have to explain her religion and Earth’s history, she wanted to know more about the Martians. “What do Martians believe?”
“Oh, our beliefs are pretty simple,” Zewratses said, opening her eyes and focusing them all on Dinah.
It was a little unnerving, but she was getting used to it.
Zewratses continued: “The Universe always turns, and we need to be ready for it when it does.”
Dinah stared at her. “That’s it?”
Zewratses shrugged all four shoulders. “Yup, as you say. What else is there?”
Dinah gestured to the book between them. “How about why we are all here? Or why bad things happen, or why some people get punished and others don’t? How do you know how to behave, what is right and what is wrong? What do you think happens after you die?”
Zewratses’ mouth hung open more a moment, revealing two rows of teeth. “You need religion for all of that?”
“You don’t?”
“Of course not. What cannot be answered by science or reason is the will of the Universe, and we don’t really bother trying to understand it further. The Universe will turn as it pleases, and we turn along with it.”
Dinah was speechless.
Zewratses chuckled, the sound surprisingly Earthen. “No wonder you were all so confused for so long. If it makes you feel better, when your first machines landed on our planet, there were a few who believed they were gods, and started worshiping them, until Earthens showed up and explained what they were and where they came from. My uncle was one, actually, and you can bet they were all embarrassed when the truth came out.”
Dinah just shook her head. “You must think we are all crazy.”
“Well,” Zewratses smiled, “that’s what makes you interesting.” She shook her head as well, mimicking Dinah’s movement. “Let’s get back to the topic for today. How exactly did your Christ come back from the dead? We’ve been studying that for ages and haven’t cracked it.”
Dinah held back yet another sigh. This outreach thing was harder than she thought it was going to be. But she still leaned over the book, her head next to the Martian’s, ready to try and answer any questions her new friend had.
© The Lightning Tower, 2020